Tuesday, November 6, 2012

How Bad is the Average Player?

I can't make a definitive answer to that question of course but I have always held the belief that the average member of the player base is actually really bad. I've even gone on record here many times saying I believe that the looking for raid is way to hard for the player base it is aimed to appeal to. I actually believe the looking for raid is even to hard for most of the people that call themselves raiders.

After a little trip in the looking for raid yesterday I saw nothing that would change my mind. As a matter of fact I was left with the opinion that the player base is even worse than I had expected.

You see, my druid is a tank and a healer. I do not like doing LFR as a tank for two reasons, one being the wait time for tanks is insane and the second that I never know what to expect from my tanking partner. Unlike going in as a damage dealer and to some smaller extent a healer, where you if are a little off you can easily blend in, when you are a tank there is nowhere to hide if something goes wrong. It is either you, or the other tank, and you know that the true bad players always play the blame game and will instantly call you out and the masses are stupid enough to believe them, so they will speak up instantly blaming you and you are now labeled the bad tank. With all that said, I only go into LFR when there is another guild tank on and we can do it together.

So that means I needed to heal, but I have not finished my healing set. I only have 9 pieces of it and while I am sure I can fake it, there are some fights there that can get really healing intensive when doing it with random people. So I did not want to go in as a healer if I were not 100% about it. Also, I wanted to get gear for my tank spec, not my healing spec.

So what did that mean for me? Kitty. I could go in as kitty and get gear for my tank. One problem, I have not played kitty in years.

Off to the internet to save the day. Read a few guides online and got myself a standard basic rotation and went to the dummy to play for a bit. After getting a bit comfortable with it I went to do some quests to test it out in action.

After doing my quests I noticed I can never get my rotation working because things died to fast so I looked online for some addons to help with my rotation. I found a few, tested them, did not like them, but came across a comment from someone that said to use this macro (see below) and you can do respectable. You will never top the damage meters but you will be able to go through random content with at least adding a decent contribution.

I looked at it and decided to make another version with mangle instead of shred in case I had a movement happy tank and was having issues getting behind the mob.

So I had that macro, one with mangle instead for when I was not behind, and all my gear gemmed, reforged and enchanted for tanking. Good thing most of my gems and enchants are good for cats also. I did have 2 useless cat trinkets however, the brewfest stamina one and the darkmoon stamina one. So right off the bat I would be at a disadvantage but oh well, I was trying to get gear for my bear and I should at least try. If I happen to win a DPS trinket I can save it for next go around.

I hit the target dummy once more before I entered the queue, just to see what I could do. No buffs what so ever, not even mark and the mangle macro got me 33K DPS steady. The shred macro, from behind, got me 35K. Okay, if I can do 33K-35K with no buffs I am sure I can go by unnoticed in the LFR. All buffed I should be able to pull 40K-45K and finish in the middle of the pack and basically slide by completely unnoticed.

Sadly it did not go as planned.

I could not get by unnoticed because I was always between #2 and #6 in damage done. Seriously folks. With two useless for DPS trinkets, all reforged for dodge, only a 466 item level, having not played cat in many years and using a freaking 1 button macro, that I made into 2 for positional reasons, and I kicked ass.

How bad is the average player?

If I could end up between second and sixth on the meters under the conditions I mentioned above I can answer that question. The average player is horrible.

I wonder what the other 15 DPS would think if they knew that the person that finished #2 was a tank with all tank type gear playing cat for the first time in ages pressing only 1 button the entire fight.

At least I know I can now do respectable in kitty without even trying, when compared to the average player at least. And just think. I actually felt bad thinking I would be taking advantage of the group by not trying my best, like I should have. Sad state of the game if you ask me.

The fact I did any research at all really skewed the results, you are right. The majority of players would not even go that far.

I still think that someone that has been playing their class for 2, or 3, or 5 or more years even without ever looking at anything online should have done better than someone like myself who admittedly knew going in that I would not be doing my best.

The average player should be the player that I was right there. Not really doing good but at least doing good enough to get by.

The fact so many were so far behind me scares me for the future of the game and random group content. It seems the majority keep getting worse.

I concur with this comment. Although I think it supports Grumpy's overall point: the "average" player is worse than originally assumed.

My shaman friend (his alt) had a similar experience. He hit 90, did a couple scenarios and two heroics, and met the ilvl requirement for LFR. So he queued, and by the end of the raid was #2 on Elegon and #3 on Will of Emp. We joked about it, about how awful the other players were. But really, he is above average on his characters, even his alts. So we expected him to do better than the "average" players. We just didn't expect "average" to be such a low bar in Mists of Pandaria.

That is exactly what I am getting at. I knew I looked things up and that put me in a better place than most. I also knew I was not reforged correctly, was using tank trinkets and enchants, and settled on using a macro that is not really all that great.

I knew I would be able to slide by, to fake it if you will. I did not expect to be #2-#6. If I were #12-#15 I would have figured that is where I belong.

Hiya Grump (I notice you seem to be on a soapbox about something in the last few posts- grumpier than usual)

Anyway, me too - impressed about the macro and as Mark said - you aren't average (I'm average). So, I am lvl 86 druid with kitty talents and glyphs, with 86 MoP green gear in kitty - how well will that work for me - the macro I mean? (don't answer) I plan on testing it out tonight.

It will probably work fine as the lazy approach. It is why I did it, to be lazy.

Just make another one for questing. Everywhere you see shred change it to say mangle.

You can only shred from behind and when questing you will never be behind the target to use it. So use the version with all mangles instead of shreds.

Otherwise, I think this will work amazing for questing.

I still think using it in a raid would be holding yourself back. You (me) could do much better with practice and mixing in other skills and cooldowns. But for the basic stuff, it should be more than good enough.

And based on what Mark above said, you are not average either. You are here reading, asking questions, and I would think looking up information on your class other places. That alone puts you well ahead of the majority of the player base. You have a desire to learn and get better. Most don't.

See, actively looking to learn places you above most others that play.

If any of the people in the LFR I was in tried as you have I would have ended up looking like the idiot that was using a one button macro, like I should have looked like, instead of being as high as I was.

i've been playing Balance for 2 years now, I have been considering changing to feral because of posts like this. I work my tail off, do my rotation perfectly, get the right enchants, food buffs (what have you) and I end up in 9th to 15th place out of 25 in my first LFR raid of Mists. I was disappointed that despite working all the cooldowns, I was middle of the pack.... in LFR~!

I know how you feel. Playing my hunter after they added all this clutter and junk to it and then playing my other characters, I wonder why I have so much to do to try to keep up and other classes can keybind everything they use on 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and just hit them in order and do the same I do with no effort what so ever when I have to play whack a mole and one mistake means my DPS is screwed for the entire fight.

The game is not designed to offer enough reward for effort for some classes. Balance is like that at the moment but in truth feral is brutally difficult to keep up all those buffs and debuffs. It is just sad that some one button macro does it better than people that have been practicing it for years.

lol, sorry GE, I was being facetious. My only thing with macros is to combine a few of the same ones I use over and over into 1 to lower the amount I have to deal with. I have a medical problem where I get confused even with punching the same one button. Hence my trek to combine hunter's mark, pet attack and concussive shot (I know, I know :D ) into 1. Yes, I do get confused with those. I just had a thought - oooh, I get it now - your post is facetious too! LOL, good one GE. As always - good hunting with ya.

Nothing wrong with that. But cast sequence macros can tend to not be so great some times. Those, most of the time I would say to be weary of.

Combining things is fine. You can combine kill command and bestial wrath, being BW is not on the global cooldown. Rapid fire before readiness is another good one. There are many good macros, lots that will make life easier, the cast sequence ones are the only ones I would suggest not to over use.

Even more so as a hunter being we soon will be able to cast everything while moving, spamming a cast sequence macro will mean you start pulling everything known to man and that makes tanks very mad. lol

You will never get maximum potential with a rotation button like that, it is just not as effective as human reaction, but I must say for a class like feral that has a lot to watch, it is a good way to fake it and it seems that even faking it you can still do better than the masses.

I tried clc for my paladin and noticed I was looking more at the button then my surroundings and my DPS actually went down when in practice. So I used it for roughly a hour on the dummy until I got used to the rotation and how and when to do thing and then went into a dungeon with it turned off and did fine.

Things like that are helpers to learn, I believe they actually hurt game play if people try to use them as more than that.

I completely agree with what you said about tanking LFR. I've only tanked the first half once without my regular tanking partner, trust me once was enough. I actually had to make a macro to /w the random tank for him to taunt every single time. Lots of unwanted explosions on Stone Guards, thankfully that doesn't hurt much on LFR.

As for LFR dps well I usually come 5th or 6th on first half, 1st or 2nd on second half or a spot or two lower depending on how many dps I queued with. On a boss by boss basis I'm not so sure. This is as a tank. Sometimes the only people on the dps meters above me are guildmates who I queued with. If I can do that as a tank then something is a little broken. On normal raids with my guild I'm at the bottom, with all the dps above me as it should be, so I don't think it's me that's not right.

Speaking on LFR, by far the most annoying thing that's happened so far is a protection paladin queueing as dps. This was presumably because of the insane queues you mentioned. If they'd just continued on as dps I wouldn't have had issue, I mean people doing 12k is sadly not uncommon in LFR. However, he kept righteous fury on, and he taunted the boss whenever I moved away from him. As I moved away on Stone Guard to be within range of my tanking partner, for his taunts, or to get away from a trap. It was just beyond frustrating. It also put my taunt on cd when it shouldn't have been which made the encounter execution clunky. I was swearing in vent all encounter and then at the end I /w him "don't try to tank when you're not the tank" and the healer put in /ra "Swap to dps or leave". He did swap to dps so perhaps he'd been caught in combat when we pulled the trash too quickly or something for the earlier switch. However, if that was so he should have taken righteous fury off and never hit the taunt button.

As I'm sharing I'll also say about a really annoying rogue. We were waiting by the spirit kings for him to be on the other side of the room before moving in, so everyone had time to get inside. So a rogue put tricks of the trade on and pulled him. I didn't realise what happened at first till I checked the logs after, I just saw two of my guildmates who were at the front get killed. So I grabbed the boss and then of course most people were locked out. This then got me a massive wave of abuse and half the group quit. If I hadn't been there with my friends I probably would have followed them out, especially as it actually hadn't been my fault. Thankfully the responsible rogue left right after he'd done it.

LFR is a lot easier than normal but it goes so much smoother with proper communication. 2 tanks, a couple of healers, a few dps all on vent and the amount of time it takes about halves.

As for the feral macro, nice find. I'll have to try it out as I'm quite rusty myself. Once I get more used to it again I'll of course discontinue using it.

Tanking the stone guards the way they are supposed to be tanked is just impossible. Without communication it can not be done. You are better just tanking the three together and putting the pressure on the healers. As a healer myself I hate that but I do understand that would be the only way to get the fight done with random people.

As you noted and it seems to back up what I said, the LFR is just to hard for the average player. If the tank is routinely beating DPS there are issues. One of my guild tanks was 10th on every fight in the run we did last night. It was 8 DPS from guild and one warlock from another server that were always above him. All the other DPS, the ones not from guild, were always under him. This is why LFR is too hard. They need us to do it.

Not sure how they managed it but nearly half the raid died at the start of one boss. We were left with my guild there, 2 tanks, 2 healers and 8 DPS along with 3 other people, as the only ones alive. We finished it ourselves. Without us, it would have been wipe city.

These people in there can not play, do not understand how to move, wouldn't know a rotation if it hit them upside the head and we have to carry them for our own good. If we wiped, the only people we are hurting are ourselves, because we would need to do it again with the masses that can not beat a one button macro. It is sad all around.

I would never use that macro seriously and still feel as if I took advantage of the group I was in using it and not trying the best I could, but I think some of those people could really use that macro, it would make them better, and that is a sad state of things.

Glad to be back, still without heat, but my cold fingers can type at least. It is just freaking cold.

So wait ... all you did was spam that simple macro and you still did serious damage (relative)?

Why are you writing about the other people doing less DPS when in fact you should be complaining about Blizzard and the design behind this? You should be writing about why everything is tuned for braindead people...

Don't understand me wrong, i had a somewhat similar experience the other day while leveling my Rogue in LFD (http://beetlezombie.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/are-rogues-the-crap-class-in-wow/), and I totally get what you mean.

But to use a simple macro as your rotation and still do decent ... damn.

But I get you 100%, and it's this reason I'm currently playing my Rogue DPS and haven't touched my tank or healer. Just ramping around in dungeons, no responsibility, no stress, vanish when people do stupid things (and boy do they!).

Rogue is for me the perfect invisible class in WOW at the moment. Sneaky and selfish stealthy.

Yes, all I did was spam this macro. I did need to manually hit tiger's fury however as it seemed to not work in the macro. So outside of doing tiger's fury myself and switching between the mangle and shred versions as needed, all I used was the macro.

I can do the same, sort of, with my hunter. I just have the pet that makes me get noticed a lot more than others. I do love doing a heroic, like yesterday, and everyone dies and I solo the rest the boss. Maybe a blood DK can do it but outside of that, only a hunter can do stuff like that.

I prefer to be a solo player. I am not really all that fond of group content or random people. And being a hunter allows me the ability to basically do anything myself and I can think of everyone else as a support class for me. And worst case, find a corner and FD.

I can't get into a rogue because I hate hearing need more energy all the time. I am a button masher, I will hit 2 15 times while waiting for it to actually go off because I know it is what I want to do next. If I hear something like need more energy I don't want to play that class.

I like hunters and mana users because I rarely if ever hear stuff like that. Oddly, I love rage tanks more than the others even if they have the same need more rage issue. Guess it changes on the role I play.

I have complained about the design of it before as well. I hate that hunters got 5 new buttons into an already full rotation and then the sims placed them dead last. Sure, I beat out those sims every time now that I have seen it, but it is still wrong. If something is more complex you should be rewarded for doing it well. But nope, my feral druid (who are really complex in their own right) can destroy most hunters when I don't even try and that is wrong.

I am afraid that seeing this is making me rethink playing the game or more so trying to be the best I can be. Why try when I can one button things and do acceptable DPS in random content. It almost makes me feel like the effort I put into it is not even worth it.

Now, if I am in a raid or a heroic and see a kitty and he beats me I will look at recount and see if he is using that macro. If he is, I will consider quitting the game.

There is no way a macro should be able to beat someone that really tries. That is why 15 of the DPS that were in there on the one fight I finished 2nd should be pissed. Not because I beat them but because a macro beat them without even trying. Wrong. Very wrong.

I attempted to follow the strategy as best as I could. Some fights it seemed almost not worth it. So on some fights I just stuck to the boss.

I was all over the place. Bursting at points to 68K or around that and usually settling down around 38K. I thought being I could do 35K on the dummy I would be able to do more, but in action and trying to avoid things like I should, and not playing a melee normally, I did not do as well as I could have even with that macro. I am sure if I took a week to actually learn to play the class I could do much better, but being I am doing this just for gear for my bear while not having to wait the bear wait and beating most of the DPS, I won't even waste my time trying to actually learn it right now. If anything, my offspec is heals, not cat. I hate energy classes.

For over all raid I was 4th with 43K but that includes trash, which I did not use the macro for, I just used the basic AoE rotation and was usually near #1 on trash as well.

Mind you, I am not really a cat and I have no intention of becoming one. I actually felt really bad and like I was doing something wrong trying to cheese it this way, until I saw it in action. And while I still feel bad about it, it doesn't bother me. Almost as if I now feel no one else is trying, why should I.